WHEN heavy floods hit Jakarta in January, sections of the city were crippled for days.
A levee close to the centre of the city broke, effectively turning the main thoroughfare into a river for 24 hours. A large dam in the north overflowed, leaving some streets under at least 2m of water for a week.
There were fears that the deluge could become as severe as that in Bangkok in 2011 and Manila last year, when thousands of people were displaced for weeks.
Politicians rushed out ambitious plans to overhaul and improve infrastructure, as disaster officials carried out cloud-seeding, so that rain would fall into the sea instead of on Jakarta.
Today, some of these flood mitigation plans are embroiled in bureaucratic wrangling once more.
But the key concern has not changed: A great deal of work needs to be done if 500-year-old Jakarta is to survive as a liveable city for another 50 years.
A disregard for planning regulations, large populations, politics and poverty remain key challenges for the authorities in Jakarta and other major cities which must put in place measures to fix them.
Record heavy rainfall was, of course, the main trigger for the severe flooding. But haphazard development over the past decade was also to blame - and reining it in is a key part of the solution.
Click here to read the full story.
